A viewer’s guide to the Kagan confirmation hearing

You’d have good reason to answer no. In the six weeks following Solicitor General Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court by President Obama, there were just 11 stories on the network evening news on the former Harvard Law School dean.

And even on Capitol Hill, Kagan’s hearing seems destined to be overshadowed by the confirmation hearing of Obama’s pick to direct the Afghan war, Gen. David Petraeus, scheduled to start Tuesday.

But whether anyone is paying attention or not, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., is set to gavel the high-stakes Supreme Court confirmation hearing to order this afternoon.

Despite the lack of attention, Kagan’s nomination could prove pivotal to the high court’s future. The 50-year-old New York native has been chosen to replace the court’s most consistent liberal, Justice John Paul Stevens, so even a modest shift to the center by Kagan could tilt the closely divided court significantly to the right.

With that in mind, liberal groups are nervous about Kagan’s lack of a judicial record on issues ranging from abortion to privacy. Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., wrote a letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee describing as “troubling” a memo Kagan wrote in 1997 to President Bill Clinton urging him to back a ban on so-called “partial birth” abortions.

Conservative legal scholars are divided, with prominent legal scholars such as former Solicitors General Ted Olson and Ken Starr supporting her nomination. Starr, former dean of Pepperdine law school, calls her academic writings “simply superb.” But grassroots conservative groups strongly opposed to Kagan have turned up the volume in the days leading up to the hearings.

“We agree with Kagan that the highest court in the land is no place for pure political activists and amateurs in need of on-the-job constitutional training,” says Andrea Lafferty, executive director of the Traditional Values Coalition.

The final result on the Senate floor seems a foregone conclusion. Both of California’s senators are certain “yes” votes. Republicans &#151 even Kagan skeptics &#151 say that she’s headed for confirmation unless she commits a major blunder in coming days. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be tough questions, and eventual opposition, from most Senate Republicans.

Still, the Kagan hearings will contain far more than predictable political posturing. Here are five things to watch for during the hearings:

SIGNS OF LIBERAL ANGST

It’s highly unlikely that any committee Democrats will vote against Kagan. But some of the more liberal members may try to pin her down on issues involving civil liberties and executive power, where she has in the past sided with the government on matters of national security. Key senators to watch: Wisconsin’s Russ Feingold and Minnesota’s Al Franken and Amy Klobuchar.

THE TONE OF REPUBLICAN ATTACKS

Democrats believe they have at least sixty votes in the bag to foil a potential Republican filibuster. But Republicans think they can score political points even if they lose the final vote.

Led by Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., committee Republicans are likely to ask the nominee a series of tough questions about hot-button subjects such as abortion, public displays of religion, gun control and gay rights. They’ll also lecture her about her record at Harvard Law School, particularly her acquiescence to a university policy limiting military recruiters’ access to the campus because of the military’s refusal to allow openly gay soldiers to serve.

Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, normally a carefully modulated questioner, sent signals late last week that he was going to be aggressive in his cross-examination of the nominee.

“For most of her career, Ms. Kagan has endorsed, and has praised others who endorse, an activist judicial philosophy,” Hatch said Thursday in a speech on the Senate floor. “Judges who bend the Constitution to their own values and who use the Constitution to pursue their own vision for society take this right away from the people and undermine liberty itself.”

POSSIBLE GOP DELAYING TACTICS

Republicans don’t believe they can stop Kagan’s confirmation. But the leadership is holding out hope that they can slow down the process and perhaps delay Kagan’s seating until after the Supreme Court convenes on the first Monday in October.

Already, Sessions has threatened a Republican boycott of the hearings if Leahy doesn’t give senators more time to read the 160,000 pages of documents the White House has released. And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has pointedly refused to rule out a filibuster attempt, even though he doesn’t have the 41 votes needed.

Photo by Meredith McDermott/ Hearst Newspapers

Sen. John Cornyn

JOHN CORNYN’S ROLE

The Texas senator, a former state Supreme Court justice and state attorney general, wears two hats to the hearings: Judiciary Committee member and chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. Cornyn’s questions during the hearings will be a guide to the wedge issues Republicans intend to highlight in the November midterm elections.

Example: guns.

“Her words and actions throughout her career indicate that she is ‘not sympathetic’ to the constitutional rights of hunters, collectors, and other law-abiding citizens who own guns for sport or self-defense,” Cornyn said Friday. “America’s gun owners deserve to know if they can trust the same person who coordinated Bill Clinton’s aggressive gun-control agenda to interpret and define the contours of the Second Amendment for decades to come.”

REPUBLICANS SUPPORTING KAGAN

No GOP senator has yet committed to supporting Kagan, but Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown will accompany her to the hearing Monday. The key panel member to watch is Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the only committee Republican to vote for Justice Sonia Sotomayor last year. It would also be significant if other Senate Republicans, such as Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, announced their positions on the Kagan nomination this week.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss, R-Ga., a Kagan critic, said that “at the end of the day, I feel certain she will have (some) Republican support.”

But top White House political adviser David Axelrod said he doesn’t expect much bipartisanship in the final vote.

“It’s a highly charged political environment,” he said. “We are a few months from an election. There is going to be enormous political pressure to divide up on a partisan basis.”